Tripping the Light Fantastic
by wren-kt7oz
Summary: iTo "trip the light fantastic" is to dance nimbly or lightly, or to move in a pattern to musical accompaniment./i Another challenge fic. Justin remembers something important.


It doesn't happen the way it did when he remembered the bat swinging at his head.

Then it was like being caught in some kind of mental super-storm - his mind tossed by gale force emotional winds, scorched by the lightning strike of traumatic images and assaulted by thunderbolts of remembered pain. This time he just wakes up one morning hearing a voice in his head (a voice that sounds a lot like Vic's for some reason) saying something about "tripping the light fantastic" and the words conjure an image of him and Brian dancing together.

They're not dancing like they do at Babylon - where he writhes and swivels his hips in time to the music, while Brian does that weird-assed scrunched down thing he does, jerking awkwardly around in a way that would be totally laughable done by anyone who wasn't Brian Kinney. It's not even the other way they dance at Babylon, when their bodies sway so closely together that there's no room for anything else; not even the music blasting from the sound system can force its way into the world they inhabit at those times, so they dance to the tunes that are in their heads and their hearts and their cocks, the tunes no one else can hear, and then it's not like they're dancing as much as they're fucking with clothes on, and fucking they've always been good at.

No, the image he sees while those words float again through his mind, isn't like those dances at all. There are no flashing lights and they're not surrounded by hot horny men. They're not wearing their clubbing clothes, designed to display and tantalize, they're wearing black suits and a white scarf floats around them - now caressing Brian's neck, now softly draped round his own. The music isn't the relentless thumpa thumpa of Babylon's techno-dance beats, it's a more mellow sound, with a slightly Latin feel. And there's nothing even remotely awkward about the way Brian is moving.

He leads Justin confidently round the floor, and it's like they must have rehearsed this a thousand times, they've got the moves down so smooth and natural. The first twirl is easy, faultless, and then they move into a sequence of three or four, one after the other. Then they sway together again, their bodies moving effortlessly together in time with the music in a way they've never done at Babylon.

Justin feels again the joy and the pride and the … the fucking sureness, the absolute confidence in what they had together that he'd felt when he slid his hands down to unbutton Brian's jacket, and Brian had let him slide it off his shoulders, let Justin symbolically strip him right there on the dance floor; that surrender saying more, to Justin at least, about Brian's willingness to finally accept Justin's place in his life than anything else could possibly have done.

And then they're moving together again and after a long sequence of twirls, where it feels like Brian is displaying him, showing him off, showing **_them_** off, Brian pulls him close and dips him. Justin's body remembers, an intense muscle memory, exactly how that felt, and his leg moves, bending at the knee, mimicking the way it had slid up round Brian's hip to anchor them both. Then, just as he comes upright again, Brian pulls him even closer, and lifts him, spinning them both round and round till Justin's not sure if the giddy sensation he feels comes from the spins or from the kiss that goes with them; the kiss that seems to go on for ever, sucking all of the air from his lungs and replacing it with a sense of joy that is so intense it seems like it's all he'll ever need to sustain him.

Justin lies there for a moment, not stunned exactly, just a little surprised at how easily the most "ridiculously romantic" moment of his life had been recaptured. He figures it was like that damned butterfly metaphor. For months, years even, he'd fought to regain that memory, with no joy. Finally, he'd let it go, stopped clinging so desperately to that moment in time; there had been so many good memories since that it seemed like he no longer needed the reassurance of his place in Brian's life, in Brian's heart, that one particular memory had once represented.

So he supposes it figures that once he'd stopped chasing the memory, it had just crept up on him, and settled lightly into his brain, like it had never gone away; just like the fucking butterfly of happiness or whatever the hell it was in that lame metaphor.

Of course, maybe the conversation (read argument) they'd had last night with Linds and Mel had helped to trigger it. The one where Brian had dug his toes in over the munchers wanting to enroll Gus in the dancing classes that JR had started taking.

"But Brian," Lindsay had urged, "Gus really wants to do this. He got very upset this week when we took JR to class and he couldn't join in."

There had been many mumbles about "turning my son into a fucking lesbian" and the like, which Justin had thought at the time stemmed more from Brian's own lack of dancing ability than anything else, other than needing a little time to get his head around the idea. Now, the memory of that dance so fresh in his mind, Justin's not so sure.

He becomes aware of Brian stirring beside him, and turns towards him. Hazel eyes blink at him, and he grins at his partner, slithering closer, his leg once more repeating that well-practiced, freshly remembered, slide up and over Brian's hip. As their cocks brush together, and their morning ritual begins, he pauses in his nibbling of Brian's earlobe.

"Maybe we **_should_** help the girls pay for those dancing lessons for Gus as well as JR," he says. "You never know when he's going to want some guy to save the last dance, and he needs to be able to dazzle him by really knowing how to trip the light fantastic."

Brian's response indicates bluntly that he has other priorities right at that moment, but Justin knows that eventually the words will sink in, and Brian will realize that he's remembered.

Being Brian, he probably won't say anything.

But Justin's ready to bet that Gus gets his dancing lessons.


End file.
